INDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS

Sit still as statue

In the doorway.

Only eyes move

To observe

The sky above the street.

Cars, vans and

Hyper exploited moped riding

Food bringers

All pass remarked

But unexamined.

Ignore tarmac

And all that rolls there,

Only care

About feathers slicing air.

Notice the different ways

That they beat and glide

Notice, examine and classify

Herring gull, feral pigeon, wood pigeon,

Magpie, ring necked parakeet, crow

Sparrow, goldfinch, blue tit, starling

Maybe even a kestrel, a buzzard

Or a red kite.

Look again to check

Wing shape and flight pattern.

Sit and watch and wait

Until one day spring ends

With a mad high-pitched scream

And a bird that flies like nothing else

Because it always

Flies and nothing else

Swifts.

anglerfish

A monkfish on the bottom of an aquarium tank

Lies camoflagued on the gravel,

It could be looking at the glass screen

That separates her from the world

And keeps her alive

Though I doubt that

She knows that.

The screen that

I stare at every day

Has shown me what a monkfish is,

What it looks like,

What it does

And that anglerfish is

Its other name.

Now I know how

It can be caught and cut,

And sliced and iced.

Some say that

Its flesh tastes nice.

And that’s not all

That my screen lets me see,

I can see sea, seals,

Seagulls, sealions, sealice,

And long muscular fighting conger eels,

Hooked and hauled up on lines,

From sunken wrecks.

I don’t know

If this tidal flow

Of maritime information

Keeps me as supine

As the anglerfish

Lying on the bottom of my tank

Staring at the screen

But I can tell you this,

My false consciousness

Is full of fish.

grouse

Now I know,

Or imagine that I know

What it feels like

To be a grouse.

Whatever I say

Is no use.

The beaters and dogs

Are moving up behind me.

I feel fear

As they draw near.

Soon I must break cover,

Try to fly

As fast as I can over

The booming

Lead spraying guns.

I’ll have to make a sky run

Launch myself

Get it over

Get it done

As fast as I dare

Through the deadly

Flak-filled air

Beat my wings desperately

And pray that

I don’t get terminated by

Some cretinous plutocrat.

sphere I go

 Like a sphere I go

Here and there,

A spare pillock,

Or an unattached bollock,

That rolls around

Because it’s round

And all there is to do

Is to go wherever

It’s pushed and

Impelled by

The tip of the cue.

Never knowing why

Never having a clue,

Just rotating on something

That’s rotating in space.

A pimple on a pimple

In a place that’s

Not a plaice.

A jellyfish in an ocean

Has much more control.

Like flotsam

Like jetsam

Any tide can carry me by

Wash me up,

Or take me under

Let me breathe,

Or make me drown.

It’s as if I was a human

In a world

Ruled by a clown.

Lilieth leapt the electric fence,

Lilieth leapt the electric fence,

Maybe, at the time, it made sense,

To pounce, claws extended, at a bird in flight,

And so, fall into freedom by accident.

Or maybe she made a deliberate jailbreak,

‘cause you gotta do what you gotta do,

To get outta the zoo.

Who knows what a lynx thinks?

 

But briefly, Lilieth  the lynx got away

And was no longer on display,

She was no longer confined,

To be admired or to be ignored ,

By the curious, the awestruck, or the bored.

Peering through the wire.

 

Perhaps real freedom then kicked in,

With no food and drink provided,

Out in the woods and the fields and hills,

To eat she has to hunt and kill,

And at first maybe she has an edge,

As it must be centuries,

Since any lynx walked and stalked

Along these thickets and hedges,

So maybe some rabbits and mice,

Or a bird or two, turned just too late

And drew their last breaths,

Between the jaws of golden-eyed death.

 

Sadly, hunters can be hunted too,

And Lilieth could not be left to be free,

She was the ‘property’ of a zoo,

And large predators in Britain just cannot be,

Unless they’re members of the bourgeoisie.

 

Uncaught Lilieth caused official fear

Alleged to pose a risk “severe”,

So a killing bullet, not a tranquilising dart,

Was sent to stop this beauty’s heart.

 

But the wheel will turn, and justice will be done,

And free once more,  Lilieth will run,

Padding along on larger paws,

With longer, stronger, deadlier claws,

Reborn a larger, fiercer cat,

 

She’ll rip out the throats of bureaucrats.

imperial shitstorm

Before I was born,

The island where I now live,

Was one origin

Of a worldwide shitstorm.

A tornado of piracy,

A cyclone of brutality,

Sending ships

To inflict war, exploitation

And imperial inhumanity.

It was not unique in this,

And what’s more,

Maybe its people learnt

From what had gone before,

When longships and galleys

Arrived on its shores.

For too long a time

There was success

In these crimes,

Because it had the luck

To strike when

Its victims were

Divided and weak.

Then its sins were glorified,

Dressed with stolen jewels,

Silks, gold and furs

And myths that dignified

Theft’s cause.

Many who had stayed home,

Responded with

Loud applause

Since the imperial shitstorm

Transformed them

Into some sort of master race

Told they were superior

To others in

Other places.

For a while

This obscene panoply

Trundled on like

Some vast stone Victorian memorial

Dragged by proles,

Peasants and slaves

Trailing behind

Tears, bloodstains and

Broken bodies and souls

For the benefit

Of ruling ghouls.

But it’s now going

Slower and slower,

As its victims have rebelled,

Now it can barely crawl.

It needs sticks, supports

And surgeries

To stagger along at all

But it is still greeted

With cheers

For every lurch it makes

‘Reform’, they cry

Yet it’s far too late

For this lurching zombie

Parasite state.

 

 

 

Boring chores

 Sweeping floors,

Closing doors

Smearing ointment on sores

Cleaning the machine

That’s supposed to stop snores.

Boring chores

That I deplore

And then deplore again,

Down to my very core

That’s how much I deplore

Boring chores

Because they are boring

But there’s no ignoring

Boring chores

And I could make them

Even more boring

By making a chore

Of keeping a list

Of chores that I’d done

And those that I’d missed

But that would have

The tedious potential

Of driving me

Completely mental

Since that list

Would continue

As long as I exist

And continue on

Some more

There can be no end

To boring chores

bright white angel

 On the hill outside the surgery,

A man walks by,

Holding a child’s hand in one hand,

And a lead attached to a small dog,

That resembles an animated bathmat,

In the other.

The child is eating something,

But drops a part of this food

Onto the pavement.

The dog wants to eat

The fallen food.

The man prevents this

By tugging the dog’s lead.

Then the three of them move on.

The fallen food remains lying

On a grey paving slab until,

 A herring gull flying by, spies it.

Circles to make sure it’s safe,

Descends like a bright white angel,

Lands,

Seizes the food in its sharp yellow beak,

And, almost immediately flies off again,

Swallowing the food.

Satisfied that the pavement is now cleansed,

I enter the surgery

To give blood.

Gishgalloping codswallopers,

 Gishgalloping codswallopers,

And disparaging apparatchiks,

Bullshit spraying placemen,

Confabulating conspiracists,

Concoctors of word-salad camouflage,

Chefs of illusion, sauciers of  poison,

Hypocritical polecat polemicists,

Ideological concoctors fooling yourselves with

Nonsenses that you intend others to lap up.

Puffers of spurious smokescreens,

Priests of the closed and comatose mind,

Offerers of false comfort,

Constructors of straw effigies.

Carboot sellers of second hand moral panics,

Singers of mendacious elegies

Sometimes there seems to be no one else than you,

But none of this is new,

Lies are as old as Adam,and older.

Baboons lie to lions

And terns feign broken wings to conceal their nests

Even flies lie, pretending to be bees.

So why is the current torrent of untruth

So distressing?

Could it be that I have fallen for my own lies

About my honesty?

the anticharismatic 2

 Hello, I am a slug, and I’m crawling out tonight,

Leaving a trail of slime because I’m going to unite

With the headlouse, the woodlouse, the weevil and the rat,

And also join up with several other species that

Are anti-charismatic, in the public eye,

But this is an injustice which we seek to rectify.

 

None of us look striking posing on mountainsides,

Migrating across savannahs, or singing in the sky,

We don’t dive or leap majestically out of the ocean.

Fine artists don’t paint us to symbolise emotions,

Or patriotism, freedom and other noble notions.

We don’t roam in rainforests or on tundras,

We were stowaways on the ark.

Where we live is called infested

Never made a national park.

No one will cross the world to see us,

But to hear a gorilla fart,

They’ll fly all the way to Africa in a polluting jet plane.

The gorilla farts, they gasp in glee,

And then fly back again.

We won’t sell you anything

With cute faces or appealing eyes

The means of our own deaths are what we advertise,

Since a picture of a cockroach sells tons of insecticide.

We are vermin, pests, pariahs, carrion eating parasites,

But when it all ends, we’ll cut you down to size,

Because the corpse of one lion will feed a thousand flies.

 

 

©PR Murry

VORTEX

Hypnotised, watching the water swirl.

A lovely vortex forms above a plughole,

Bits of detritus begin to rotate,

Fragments of things that didn’t get ate.

There’s a currant in the current,

Along with other clutter washed off plates.

Trapped and twirled by gravity

Into a deep dark cavity,

Into the black hole beneath the kitchen sink;

Spun round, sucked down, gone in a blink;

Down through the pies and drains

And it’s never coming back again.

Or is it?

I have a suspicious misunderstanding

Of all this physics.

The planet I live on is rotating in space;

For all I know, it’s changing its place;

It might be one fragment in a massive whirlpool,

Irresistibly pulled into a cosmic plughole.

 

 

 

 

MY NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM

 Once I could walk to Darwin’s cathedral,

Which was not my father’s house,

But was nearby.

My aunt aught me to pray

After my mother died,

Which was some solace

Or comfort then.

Yet my wishes, whatever they were,

Remained ungranted.

Ancient words learned by rote,

And misunderstood,

Did not fill any void;

But inside Darwin’s cathedral

I could sometimes walk alone

Along the echoing galleries,

Where the skeletons were displayed.

So, similarities were shown to me

I could see that a fin or

A flipper, a wing or a hand or claw

Were the same beneath skin,

Scales, feathers or fur.

Unlike the words of forgotten prayers,

That has stayed with me

All my life.

Sunlight Laundry

 Aged seventy-three,

I now can see

That the muse inspiring my poetry

Has always been laundry.

Ever since my first paid job

In a building named ‘Sunlight’

In Sands End

Beside the Thames

Where vans brought

Dirty sheets from Chelsea hotels

That I loaded

Into vast rotating iron cylinders

And unloaded the laundered result.

Unless the vast rotating iron cylinders

Went wrong and produced

A massive knot of wet linen,

That needed to be pried apart

With crowbars.

Ahh, those weren’t the days!

Now I just blunder around my bathroom,

Like a dalek without a death ray

Picking up little bits of laundry

With a plastic claw.

 

Logos and slogans

Logos and slogans get washed away

From where they were once proudly displayed

To be seen emblazoned on garments.

Once they were badges

That used to say:

‘I am this type  of person’.

Or that ‘I like this music’,

Or that ‘I believe in this cause’,

Or ‘I can afford to shop at this shop.’

They could even say

‘Don’t look at me, I’m so ordinary

That I want to wear the same logos

As everybody else.’

But the washing machine of time

Keeps on repeating its cycles;

At first it eats away the edges

Of logos and slogans,

Then maybe a letter or two

Until logos and slogans

No longer say

What they were intended to say

May be reflecting passion

Decomposing into uncertainty

‘Sto the Wa’

Doesn’t have the same ring anymore

‘P’ and ‘R’ have gone down the drain.

They’ll never be coming back again.